Growing Kosovo: What Iowans can learn from a country bursting with hope

Iowa is helping Kosovo to grow form the ashes of war
Rodney White, rodwhite@dmreg.com

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Iowa columnist Courtney Crowder at the Newborn sculpture in Pristina, Kosovo, Monday Sept. 17, 2018. This year, the O and R have been replaced with a 1 and 0 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Kosovo's independence.(Photo11: Rodney White/The Register)Buy Photo

I come from news-loving stock, so the soundtrack of my childhood was the dramatic "duh-duh" percussive intros to local and national newscasts. As a 10-year-old, I was mostly uninterested, but the images of war in Kosovo that splashed across the screen scared me enough that they easily come to mind decades later.

I hadn’t seen people running for their lives before. And they were wearing jeans like mine and bright color-blocked sweaters like the ones I loved.

I hadn’t seen blood splattered on people like that before. And it was the kind of blood that couldn’t be covered by a Band-Aid like the moms in the commercials did.

I understand that moment now as the first time I felt like I couldn’t look away even though I wanted to.

Though I couldn’t process that this was a war over ethnicity — a conflict based on a minority community (the Serbians) having power over a majority community (the ethnically Albanian Kosovars) — I could comprehend that if this horror happened there, it could happen here.

So, earlier this year, when I got the call to join the Iowa National Guard on a trip to Kosovo to learn more about our state's connection to Europe’s youngest democracy, there was no question in my mind about going. Not only would I live some sort of Amanpour fantasy, but I would finally step in this place that had taken up space in my mind for so long.

When I descended on the capital city of Pristina, I saw a bustling, modern, hip city that — save for being in Europe and having a penchant for espresso — had a distinctly American patina.

Aside from the kitsch of Bill Klinton (sic) Boulevard and Robert Doll (sic) Street and Hillary, the store that sells reproductions of the former first lady’s ensembles, Kosovars see America as their saviors, literally.

For at least a decade, the Serbian regime led by strongman Slobodan Milosevic held the Kosovars in a state of apartheid. After leaving the Kosovo question unanswered in the Bosnian peace accords, war broke out on the country’s border with Serbia.

In 1999, then-President Bill Clinton and the American delegation pushed NATO to intervene on the side of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

“Let a fire burn here in this area,” he continued, “and the flames will spread.”

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Vushtrri Mayor Xhafer Tahiri speaks to us at his family's orchard over a meal in Kosovo in Sept. 2018.(Photo11: Rodney White/The Register)

A purple cause

As Americans listened to Clinton in prime time, Xhafer Tahiri was hungry and cold, huddled in a nylon shelter halfway across the world with his eight brothers and sisters.

When bombs lit up the horizon, he felt a sense that though life was dark now, there would be light soon.

Decades later, Tahiri and I sat in his in-laws' orchard enjoying flia, a national dish of layered crepes that is eaten by peeling back each new sweet sheet.

In Kosovo’s case, Tahiri said, American intercession led to freedom. And that freedom did not deny another’s, but liberated a people, putting human rights over politics.

In the shadow of Bosnia and Kosovo, many politicians said they would never let horrors like that happen again. And, yet, Tahiri said, pulling back another layer of flia, again has come and gone many times.

"Twenty years later, I see that not the same or similar standard really applies everywhere else, and I feel for those people in those conflict zones because of this policy of nonintervention," he said. "We say they suffer. Be it from dictators or be it from foreign invaders, ordinary people suffer.”

But somewhere along the way, “help” was politicized. Patriotism became tied to nationalism and globalism, and all three became party-line punching bags.

With the centennial anniversary of the end of World War I just passed, there is no shortage of think pieces about what the rise of nationalism in the wake of Donald Trump means and the fate of globalism. I won’t wade into those waters.

But as I read those pieces and thought about my trip, I was left with a few questions: Does “America First” mean “America Only”? If we truly are exceptional, must we keep it to ourselves?

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Iowa Columnist Courtney Crowder greets members of the Kosovo Security Force at their base near Pristina in Sept. 2018, during a visit with the Iowa National Guard.(Photo11: Rodney White/The Register)

And a memory: I grew up in a family where helping others was considered a duty. Having time to volunteer, money to give and the heart to help those less fortunate was an honor.

“Where would Europe be without a Marshall Plan to help it rebuild after World War II? Just think of that,” Tahiri said. “Every nation that goes through the hardship of war and conflict needs some external help to rebuild itself.”

“We, the international community, should not refrain from supporting those countries,” he added. “Because if you stop supporting them, they will bring only more problems; they will not bring solutions.”

Newborn

In the center of Pristina, there’s a statue that spells out the word "newborn." Each giant letter is freestanding, so people can move between the pieces, and it’s repainted annually with a new theme.

In 2016, the Newborn statue was plastered with barbed wire to protest the strict visa regulations Kosovo endures because it isn't a member of the European Union. The year after, the statue was decorated like a brick wall with the N and the W knocked down to challenge a proposed wall cutting a northern town in half along ethnic lines.

This year, the O and R have been replaced with a 1 and 0 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Kosovo’s independence.

Like life, the statue reflects the good and the bad of this place — and there is strife in Kosovo. With an unemployment rate of more than 30 percent and rocky relations with Balkan neighbors, the nation is at a tipping point.

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Iowa columnist Courtney Crowder at the Newborn sculpture in Pristina, Kosovo, Monday Sept. 17, 2018. This year, the O and R have been replaced with a 1 and 0 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Kosovo's independence. Rodney White/The Register

Newborn sculpture in Pristina, Kosovo, Monday Sept. 17, 2018. This year, the O and R have been replaced with a 1 and 0 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Kosovo’s independence. Rodney White/The Register

A KC-135E Stratotanker loads with Iowa National Guardsmen for a staff ride to Kosovo Sept. 16, 2018, leaving on the 10-hour flight from Des Moines Airport to Pristina, capital of the Republic of Kosovo. Rodney White/The Register

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But, like so many places in the world, the youth are ready to pave the way for this country — and to many youngsters I spoke with, the future they want is one that reflects the quilt of the Balkan region.

At Rochester Institute of Technology’s Kosovo branch, kids from varying communities and minorities mingle. For Gelonida Bajraktari, Elda Brada and Leonita Krasniqi, all international relations majors, this blend is nothing new.

Their high school teachers made a concerted effort to move seats around and mix up project groups. Today, they celebrate Serbian friends’ holidays and dance to Egyptian friends’ music.

“They never let us see the differences," Bajraktari said. “They never let us see them as our enemies. No, they were just our friends.”

The trio is confronted all the time, they said, with people who think Kosovo is a bombed-out shell of a place. They made fun of the other high achievers at international conferences who questioned whether they had internet in Kosovo or whether they could walk on their city streets.

After a week there, I can comfortably say Kosovo endures as a place where the resiliency of the human spirit — the ability to fall and get back up — shines. And it's contagious.

I haven’t replaced the old images of Kosovo in my mind — that would betray the lessons I learned there — but I’ve added to them.

And I’m happy to say that, now, the memories of flia and the Newborn statue and 20-year-old students with dreams for a bright future outweigh the blood and the bombs and all the things that once made me want to look away.

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Former Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga talks to the Register.
Rodney White, rodwhite@dmreg.com

About the series:

After a bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing and an unsteady path to independence for Kosovo, Iowa has been quietly helping the nation's nascent democracy for more than 20 years. Now, with a foothold in one of the most politically important regions of the world, Iowa is seeing its citizen-led diplomacy pay off.

Iowa Columnist Courtney Crowder and photographer Rodney White hopped a military transport flight with the Iowa National Guard to learn more about this deep relationship. In this three-part series, the pair explore how Iowa's influence is woven into Kosovo's fabric.

About the authors:

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Courtney Crowder(Photo11: Rodney White/The Register)

COURTNEY CROWDER, the Register's Iowa Columnist, has visited four of the seven continents and is hoping to convince her fiance to honeymoon in a fifth next year. When not jetting across oceans, she traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. You can contact her at (515) 284-8360 or ccrowder@dmreg.com. Follow her on Twitter @courtneycare.

Rodney White(Photo11: Rodney White)

RODNEY WHITE has been a senior staff photographer at the Register since 2000. He covered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Super Bowl XL and the Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. He also traveled to Afghanistan, China and, now, Kosovo on assignment covering Iowans worldwide.

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